


Kapitel des Jugenvogels

by JoCarroll



Series: Princess Tutu: The Untold Story [4]
Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:40:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28534551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoCarroll/pseuds/JoCarroll
Summary: Once upon a time there was a man who died.  Only, he didn’t really die.  For when the man died he was writing a story, and the story lived on after he was gone.  The story was about a Prince who was really a prince, and a Raven who wasn’t a raven at all.  And a Princess who was fated to turn into a speck of light and vanish the moment she confessed her love.  When the man died, the characters left the pages of the story and returned to the lives they’d lived before, thankful to have escaped the fates of his tragedy.However, a new writer began to work on the story, and what had been a happily ever after became something else entirely…
Relationships: Ahiru | Duck/Fakir (Princess Tutu), Mytho/Rue (Princess Tutu)
Series: Princess Tutu: The Untold Story [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/912078
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Kapitel des Jugenvogels

**Author's Note:**

> This is the third book in an original novelization/reimagination of the Princess Tutu Anime originally written by Michiko Yokote, with some elements adapted from the manga written by Mizuo Shinonome. This story picks up after the events of the anime.

**_The Devil's Game_ **

She blinked. _Where am I?  
_ All around her the world stretched on in ominous shadows. Golden light slanted in through windows set high in… whatever cavernous space she found herself occupying. Somehow, without knowing how, she knew that the source of that light wasn’t the sun. Tall, smooth-sided columns were barely discernible through the shadows. Their lotus-like capitals held up a ceiling she couldn’t spy as it arched high overhead. A familiar rustling could be heard in the shadows. Was it… _wings?  
_ No. The sound was different than the familiar susurrus of ebony feathers restlessly settling against each other. This was a drier sound, similar but not the same. She squinted, trying to see through the shadows. There seemed to be something beyond the columns. Shelves and shelves that held up the walls, and were those… _books?_ Yes, that was the source of the sound she was hearing. Strangely, it was the sound of paper rustling like the pages of a book ruffled by the wind.  
_What is this place?  
_ Pirouetting in place on the toes of white satin pointe shoes, she stared down at the floor that stretched out around her. The space was longer than it was wide, and massive paving stones filled it from wall to wall. They looked strangely ancient, like sandstone blown smooth by centuries of wind. Barely two tiles fit in the wide space between columns, creating a strangely rectangular grid pattern on the floor, the lines of which seemed somehow carved deeper than looked to be normal. At the center of the room—or as near to the center of it as she could easily judge—a heavy X was carved into the tiles creating something like a star appearance at the central intersection. _Not a good place for dancing.  
_ What?  
She shook her head as if to clear it, having no memory of how she’d gotten to the place, or why she was dressed like… _Princess Tutu?  
_ But there was no more Princess Tutu. The pendant that had made her into that mythical, fictional character was a shard of the prince’s heart. And she’d returned that shard to him, therefore this was impossible. _A dream then,_ she decided. That’s all this is. _Just some strange dream where I’m standing on a checkerboard that isn’t a checkerboard, listening to wings that aren’t wings, dressed like Tutu and not like Tutu at all._ Which was true.   
Though the costume was similar it was not the same as the familiar garb of the faery princess. The pink underskirts of her stiff white tutu were now snowy white. The same for her pointe shoes, white now and not pink. And in place of the heavy ruby pendant she’d worn, her neck was bare. Instead, starting as a razor thin line at each shoulder, a red swath was sewn into the collar of her bodice, ending in a looping swirl over her heart. _The dress I wore when I defeated Drosselmeyer._ It was eerily similar to the gown she’d never had the chance to wear at that ill-fated fire festival fifteen or so years of curse ago.  
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realized strange stone figures stood silent sentinel at the edges of the room, just inside the rows of columns. One each for each intersection of tile. She counted them off, fifteen on each side, and as she squinted she realized the shapes were familiar. To her right they looked almost like swans, and to her left… like crows.  
“Welcome to the Devil’s Game.”  
She jumped in fright and spun toward the sound of the voice. Standing at the center of the room right over the X, was a figure that _hadn’t_ been there a moment before. He stood in shadows, and that voice…  
“Drosselmeyer?” she choked out.  
A strangely familiar and at the same time alien laugh echoed off the stone faces all around them. “Do you like it?” he asked, gesturing around at the space and not addressing her question. “I know how partial you were to the checkerboard motif, but I’ve always liked this game better. No knights, no queens, just these faceless pawns,” he chuckled darkly, “and a King.”  
She swallowed hard. “You’re dead,” she spoke flatly. “I watched Fakhir kill you.”  
“Ah yes, that was a surprising turn of events, wasn’t it?” His hand rubbed at his neck as if remembering the feel of Fakhir’s sword slicing his head from his body.  
She crept closer, trying to see through the shadows into his face. But the darkness clung to him like a robe. Still, though there was something familiar about the figure, it didn’t _look_ entirely like Drosselmeyer. It didn’t really sound like him either. _The Raven and not the raven_. “This is a dream,” she spat, “or a nightmare. It isn’t real.”  
All at once the light in the room shifted away and the darkness grew thick. A rush of air swept through the space, the restless rustling of pages increased, and the stone figures around the room seemed to turn as one in place to stare at her. “Oh I assure you, my dear,” that awful voice shivered over her nerves, “this is _very_ real.”  
Chills raced across her skin and she shook her head in sharp denial. “We beat you. The story is over. You lost.”  
Another dark chuckle filled the shadows. “Now you know better than that, little duck.”  
“I’m not a duck!” she screamed, balling her hands into fists. “And I never was, you twisted sadistic bastard!”  
“My, my, my… Seems now that you have your memories back, your language has deteriorated quite significantly.” He tutted in admonishment.  
“You don’t deserve courtesy,” she bit through clenched teeth. “Nor censure—save for the sort where I carve giant holes out of every story your poisoned hand has ever penned.”  
His answering laugh sounded almost delighted. “That fire! Oh lovely. I knew you had it in you, but I never knew it burned quite so fiercely.”  
What was he talking about? Drosselmeyer, or rather _von Rothbart,_ had never really known her at all. She was merely the orphan waif charity case adopted by Prince Siegfried—Mytho—as his ward, hardly worth the note of the wealthy and educated von Rothbart who had sought to further his connections by befriending a powerful prince. As Drosselmeyer, he knew her even less, attempting to create a character and a story for her that was so absurdly beyond the realm of reason she’d rewritten it without thinking. He’d actually tried to contrive a _romantic_ relationship between her and Mytho!  
“Don’t fall silent on me now, little bird. I rather enjoy that sharp tongue of yours,” he chuckled grotesquely.  
Her hand yearned for a sharp blade, that he might feel a more vicious bite than mere spoken venom.  
The shadowy figure drew closer, and somehow the shadows clung to him as if they were living things. Though he seemed to pass through several shafts of light, he remained in darkness. It was a truly chilling effect, and without realizing she was doing it, she’d retreated several steps before he stood a mere two or three paces away. “This isn’t real,” she repeated, her throat dry.  
“You’re right, of course,” he mused thoughtfully. “Only in the way that this room doesn’t exist in any physical realm. But you and I? This conversation? I assure you, it is as real as the beat of your heart. You didn’t really think that simply freeing me from my mortal cage could banish me from your living realm, my dear, did you?”  
“No one is powerful enough to cheat death,” she choked out.  
His laughter this time was uproarious. “It should be an abomination for a child of the Undying King to utter such nonsense.”  
“That was a curse,” she bit back hotly. Ignoring the part where he called her out as one of the blood.  
“One man’s curse is another man’s prize.” His tone was hungry, lustful, and it sent another wave of shivers across her skin. She tried to step back, but her feet seemed suddenly to be part of the stone floor. He advanced on her, “Not even death can sever our connection, my dear,” he hissed. His hot breath wafted over her face with each word and she suppressed a surge of disgust. “My blood runs through your veins, after all.”  
“No!” she cried out in immediate denial. “Impossible!”  
Though she couldn’t really see his face, she had the impression of a quirked brow and a twisted smirk. “Oh? Was it not but a day ago that your precious prince was twisted into a form of my making by my blood staining his heart? Your heart too, if I’m not mistaken. Yes, I should have realized that that pitiable thing I ripped out of your chest was incomplete. Clever of you to hide it in the shattering pieces of the prince’s heart, until that pathetic excuse for a prince was overcome with Raven’s blood that is.”  
She shook her head frantically. “Mytho defeated your blood, he purified it.”  
Drosselmeyer—or the _thing_ that would be Drosselmeyer—huffed impatiently. “At the confession of my useless daughter no less. But the fact remains, _princess,_ that your heart remained stained.”  
“I—” she wanted to deny it. But could she? Was he right? _No._ It was impossible. Not even Mytho had been aware that she’d wrapped her heart up in his. Surely the Raven’s blood hadn’t touched it. She’d have known if it had. She chewed her lip nervously, _but would I?_ She’d only just gotten all the pieces of herself back. Would she know if the Raven’s taint had marred any part of her? A sudden flash of a future seared across her mind, and she saw the prince again as a raven terrorizing the town. Only this time it was _her.  
_ “Don’t worry my dear,” he purred, circling her now. “I have no intention of turning you into a raven. Though I do like you in feathers. Maybe not those filthy white things you seem so fond of.” Reaching out, he picked up a lock of her hair and ran it through his fingers, sending a surge of revulsion through her as she jerked her head away. “Perhaps something more fitting to your coloring,” he mused in amusement.  
Suddenly he stepped back and snapped his fingers. “Ah yes!” he cried out in dark triumph, “I think I know exactly how this story should go now.”  
She blinked.  
The strange room with its checkerboard that wasn’t a checkerboard, wings that weren’t wings, Raven that wasn’t the raven, and Tutu that wasn’t Tutu was gone. In its place was a grey mist that spread from horizon to horizon beneath a pearl grey sky. She stood at its center, the garb of Tutu now the gown she’d never worn. Her hair hung in loose apricot curls over her shoulders, bright drops of dew gathering in it like tiny jewels. Music seemed to be coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. She turned in place, looking for anything familiar in this strange new frontier.  
Slowly it coalesced around her, and she recognized the expansive quad of Gold Crown Academy— _the prince’s palace—_ and wondered at how it was both the same and wholly different in every way from how she remembered it. After a moment, she realized that she was standing at the center of the swan fountain, in the place of the swan. Her white satin pointe shoes were balanced on the shimmering surface of the water.  
A swish of skirts and movement alerted her that she was not alone. Out of the mist, figures appeared. Faceless women dressed in white tutus with feathers in their hair twirled around her in time to Tchaikovsky’s timeless orchestration. Mist swirled around their willowy legs and twined around sinewy arms as they moved in graceful abstraction to the lilting symphony. A dark and unfamiliar note infected the spectral music, and the women’s dance changed abruptly. Their white gowns bled to red, the chords arcing out from some unseen orchestra transitioned seamlessly from Tchaikovsky to Stravinsky, and in the next scalding breath the mist around her went from silver to gold.  
Hot heat blanketed her body. The water beneath her feet no longer shimmered. It _burned._ Coils of red and gold fire, sparking with prismatic white cinders, warped and wefted around her in a complicated weave. The air was thick and hot, and every breath she struggled to take seared into her lungs with blazing agony. Screams ripped from her throat as the fire consumed her. She could feel her skin blistering, her blood boiling. Her white gown and stiff skirts fluttered around her on the hellish wind, and as she watched, their edges turned into greyest ash and wafted away.  
Flames burst out along her skin, starting at the tips of her fingers and toes. The small fires that blackened her flesh moved upward, washing inward, and she couldn’t even move to beat them out. Her body was paralyzed, as motionless as the stone swan she had replaced on this fountain that now spewed molten glass instead of water. Throwing back her head—the only part of herself that she could control—she screamed soundlessly into a void of flame.  
All she saw was vivid color, swirling around in a crazed kaleidoscope of shifting patterns. All she could hear was the raging roar of flames from the living inferno which had consumed her. All she felt was the all-encompassing heat that melted her flesh like wax, turned her body into smoke and ash. And just when she thought she could take the agony no more, a furious burst of heat blasted her apart body and soul.  
For interminable seconds or years she floated free of herself, bodiless, without limit or restraint. Here there was no pain. There was no fire. Here there was nothing to fear or regret. And in this cool, calm in-between she languished gratefully, allowing the void to take her over and deconstruct the very fabric of her being in slow and unnoticeable pieces until she was one with the nothingness, herself nothing. Then in a searing instant she was reconstituted, whipped back into herself as all at once fire flared again and burst across the vivid face of her reality.

Aria woke suddenly, gasping for air that wouldn’t scorch her lungs, heart hammering in her chest, and bolting out of bed as though it were on fire. No, _she_ was on fire, and she beat futilely at her cool arms and legs to stamp out nonexistent flames. It took several panicked seconds for her to calm herself and realize nothing was burning, not even a flicker of the lantern’s wick on the bedside table. A nightmare. It was just a nightmare.  
“You okay?” Rue murmured sleepily, rolling over in the bed they had been sharing to blink owlishly at her.  
“Fine,” Aria managed through a tight throat. “Just thirsty. Go back to sleep.”  
Humming in response, not quite awake, the other girl rolled back over into her blankets and returned to her dreams.  
Aria let out a breath and slumped against the wall. There was no way she was getting back to sleep tonight. Not after a dream like that. Afraid to return to the sheets, she instead pulled on the clothes she’d worn yesterday and crept out of Kyron’s room, past where the sounds of the men’s snores slipped through Fakhir’s door into the darkened hallway, and tiptoed down the smithy’s stairs into the shadowy main room where they’d spent the majority of yesterday taking a much needed rest and respite after their awful battle with Drosselmeyer and his monstrous Raven.  
Coals were banked in the stove, providing a subtle glow through the smudgy glass, and a wash of moonlight fell in neat squares through the front window. Crossing to the stove, Aria prodded at the coals and added a bit of kindling mindlessly to stoke the fire back up before her hand froze in the very act of prodding the poker into the glowing embers. Her hand fell, the poker slipping from nerveless fingers, and she surged back from the stove as if the baby flames smoking over fresh wood could somehow leap from beyond their confines to overtake her.  
“Something wrong zura?”  
A strangled scream choked in her throat and Aria leapt again, this time away from the child-like doll who had toddled up to her in the darkness. She tripped over a chair and went sprawling to the floor in a graceless heap. For some reason, the fall knocked some semblance of reason into her panicking mind.  
_You’re not on fire. Uzura isn’t attacking you. You’re safe in Kyron’s house.  
_ She repeated the words in her head three or four times before taking enough of a steadying breath to answer the question.  
“I just had a bad dream,” she whispered. Picking herself up with whatever dignity she still possessed, Aria dusted herself off, firmly closed the stove’s door, and hung the poker back in its place. “I thought I’d come sit down here rather than bother anybody upstairs.  
Uzura cocked her head curiously, and after a moment of silence she trundled over and propped herself firmly in one of the comfortable chairs before the fire. Clearly the doll had decided to accompany her. Suppressing a smile, Aria sat in the other chair and curled her feet up under her. After a long moment of silence, Uzura spoke up. “What’s a question, zura?” she inquired with the long-suffering curiosity of one who’d pondered the issue with great thought.  
Aria frowned, struggling with a way to answer the devilishly simple query. “Uh… it’s something one forms when trying to find answers about something they want to learn more of.”  
Uzura’s face screwed up in thought, slowly turning the words over and over in her head. “So what’s the answer zura?” she wondered aloud.  
Curious about what was driving this line of inquiry, Aria pursed her lips. “Well, that depends on the question.”  
Uzura huffed in apparent frustration, “Then what’s the question zura?”  
“Well…” Aria stalled, baffled. “I guess that depends on the answer.”  
Falling into a despondent silence, Uzura slumped back into her chair and stared broodingly ahead. “How can you find an answer if you don’t know the question zura?” She asked after a while.  
Aria blinked in surprise. “Um… I…” After a moment she laughed. “I have no idea.”  
More silence settled between them, and Uzura tapped absently at her drum. “Are you going to take apart the clockwork machine today zura?” she asked after a long while, when the moonshine had washed out into the pearly white touches of dawn.  
“Hmm?” Aria murmured, dredging her thoughts up from the idle place where they’d lodged themselves to focus on her companion again. “What’s that?”  
“The clockwork machine in the tower, zura,” Uzura chirped. “The one that writes stories.”  
Perking up suddenly, Aria sat forward, pinning the doll with a suddenly fierce stare. “What did you say?”

***

“This is… unbelievable,” Siegfried murmured, staring around at the printing press built into the clockwork of the gatehouse tower. Somewhere overhead, with a ponderous click followed by deep chimes, the clocktower intoned the early hour even as the turning of its gears powered the press stamping out pages in this chamber crammed beneath the clock’s workings.  
“That’s a polite way of saying what I was thinking,” Fakhir growled, his feet crunching over the layer of printed parchment that spilled across the floor.  
When Aria had awaked them early, pressing Uzura into telling them of her discovery as they gathered in predawn darkness in the front room of Kyron’s house, Siegfried hadn’t known what to expect. He certainly hadn’t expected this, though he had welcomed the respite from dreams fraught with terrifying and bile-inducing images. Memories of his time trapped within himself under the power of Drosselmeyer’s vile blood magic had warred with phantasms of himself _as_ the raven prince, wholly and enthusiastically partaking in the depredations welcomed by that mockery of himself the raven had created. He hadn’t even been able to escape himself into the waking world, as those memories plagued him even now, even here when he had a far more _real_ enemy to focus on. Still his spirit roiled, and he avoided the gazes of Rue and Aria, Kyron and Fakhir as they each wandered around the strange printing press. He could not even look himself in the eye when his face reflected back at him from windows and highly polished metalworks.  
Somewhere to his right Rue bent and picked up one of the hundreds— _thousands—_ of sheets littering the floor. “This is everything,” she whispered in horror. “Everything that’s happened. He—he was somehow writing it from inside the curse.”  
“From before,” Siegfried choked out bitterly, sifting to the bottom of the pile beneath the press’s exit point, to extract a yellowed page from what must be one of the press’s first printings. “This is from before the fire festival. Before my return to Goldkrone Towne.”  
Aria took the page from his nerveless fingers and gasped. “How could he even know these things?” she stammered in horror. “Was he writing our lives all this time?”  
“I think it’s part biography, part fiction,” Fakhir muttered as he wadded up the page he held and hurled it across the room. “If I can’t change something, I find myself writing it as it is. Maybe that’s one aspect of the—” he broke off and Siegfried cast him a look. The dark expression on the knight-apparent’s face was part loathing, part rage.  
Siegfried curled his hands into fists and breathed through his nose, counting the seconds. Five seconds in, five seconds out. He’d been watching the boy since almost the instant he’d realized that _Fakhir_ had written the story… or part of the story. _Fakhir_ had Drosselmeyer’s power. The same awful power that had created this entire cursed circumstance. He understood now the insensible rage witch hunters reveled in as they sought to cast dispersions on any suspicious interloper in desperate attempts to ferret out whatever common thread of evil maligned their lives. And in this instance it wasn’t a mere dispersion, no Fakhir actually _had_ the vile power which had consumed their lives these fifteen years past.  
And Siegfried wasn’t wholly sure the boy could be trusted with it.  
Kyron had prowled about silently since entering the chamber. He stood now examining the place where the press connected to the clock’s gears. “How can we have missed this?” he asked beneath his breath. “What sort of magic is powerful enough to endure like this?  
“There are any number of anecdotes of power that survives after death,” Siegfried murmured, automatically taking on a teaching tone. “Many curses persist within objects, on families, even in people long after their caster has passed on. Blood magic, undoubtedly practiced by Drosselmeyer, is loathsome for that very reason. A literal part of a person’s soul gets woven into the curse.”  
Fakhir startled at this information. “Like the curse that was cast on the town?”  
“Yes and no,” the prince sighed. “The curse actually only pertained to Drosselmeyer, trapping him in a pocket of reality meant to imprison him until time drained him of his power. What trapped the town was something… else.”  
Rue frowned, “What was it?”  
“A combination,” Kyron answered wearily. “Prince Siegfried shattered his heart at the same time the witch cast her curse, and von Rothbart released his own spell.” His eyes went to Aria, “I suspect the princess also had a hand in it all. What arose from that was a combined weave, locked up in the shattered shards of the prince’s heart. No single person would have been powerful enough to pause an entire town and shield it from the outside world for fifteen years. Drosselmeyer merely took advantage of the situation, undoubtedly thanks to having a toehold here in this press.”  
Siegfried hissed bitterly at the summation. If he hadn’t shattered his heart, would any of this have happened? But then—guilt swamped him as he glanced at Aria—if he hadn’t shattered his heart, she would have died.   
“Doesn’t matter,” Aria hissed angrily. Her voice was cold, her eyes like ice. “It ends here.” Placing her hand against the press, Siegfried felt an upwelling and surge of _power_ , and suddenly the gleaming metalworks dulled, rusting over and corroding before their very eyes, then grinding and stuttering to a halting stop.  
Fakhir’s eyes glimmered, “Well done,” he murmured. Unsheathing the sword he still wore at his side, he turned it round and pounded the pommel into a large rust-eroded gear. The gear shattered, triggering a domino effect of destruction.  
“Done,” Aria murmured, a triumphal sneer chasing across her lips. “It’s over.”  
Siegfried wanted to believe her. He traded a look with Kyron and turned away from the ruined press. They both knew that the scars of the battlefield last far beyond the end of the war. Even if this was over, it wasn’t _really_ over. “It’s time to go home,” he sighed, stepping toward the stairs. Time to put everything right, to pick up wherever they’d left off—if they could—and move on.  
The others followed him, and he tuned out the whispers of their conversation. He was acutely aware of Rue at his back, saw her reach toward him and then pull away. His heart twisted, but he didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t anything he could offer that would undo his sins toward her. So he kept his silence, and his distance, as he descended ahead of her.  
Life was slowly waking up on the palace grounds when they exited the gatehouse and started across the green lawns. A few people could be seen moving about, and Siegfried quickly spotted the familiar visage of Sir Leonidas Catt. In the curse-world Drosselmeyer created, Mr. Catt was their stern ballet instructor. But before that Sir Leonidas served as Siegfried’s sword master, mentor, and instructor. He had also been a member-elect of the governing Council.  
“Sir Catt!” he called out, grateful for the familiar face wholly removed from any knowledge of the dark deeds that had transpired. He hurried across the grounds to join him. “I am in desperate need of your counsel.”  
Turning with an upraised brow at the sound of his name, Sir Catt appraised him thoughtfully. “While I appreciate the elevation in status, Mr. Fürst, a ‘please’ and ‘good morning’ is generally expected in polite society.”  
Siegfried pulled up short. “What did you call me?”  
Aria dashed forward and grasped his elbow. “Mytho wait,” she whispered to him, “Look around. Something’s very wrong.”  
His eyes grazed over the grounds. Students in uniforms were beginning to enter the gates, chatting as they moved about in small groups, making their way to the cafeteria or studying to cram in as much as they could before tests. Teachers in black robes congregated here and there, strolling to their various haunts. Nothing had changed.  
“Miss Arima,” Sir Catt—no _Mr. Catt—_ appraised her, “I hope you intend to attend this afternoon’s class. Skip one more practice and you will be back on probation.” His eyes went to Siegfried then, “And I see she has influenced you poorly Mr. Fürst. I hope you won’t be missing any more practice sessions.” His eyes went past Siegfried to land on Kyron. “Visitors are required to check in at the administration building,” he called admonishingly as he gestured back toward the gate house. “Mr. Suziere, I’ll trust you to escort your guardian there.” He turned away then and started for the private quarters. No, the _ballet school_.  
“I don’t understand,” Siegfried looked shocked. “Drosselmeyer’s machine is broken. The man is dead. The spell should be undone.”  
“But it isn’t,” Rue grimly announced as she joined them. “What fresh evil is this?”  
“I think we should find out,” Fakhir muttered darkly.  
“Not here,” Siegfried answered him. “Not in the open.”  
“My house,” Kyron decided.   
“Now,” he agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sákhu, created by the Sámi people (dwelling in northern Europe from Norway to Russia) became known as The Devil's Game when Christianity moved into the region, due to the elements of Sámi beliefs in the architecture of the game. While the original rules and gameplay of Sákhu are unknown, the game has been recreated from ancient sets. It is classed as a "running fight game", the primary pieces being a central king or "god", and the pawns.


End file.
